An AI model to predict kidney damage, trained on data from veterans, works less well in women

The study was a page-turner: Researchers at Google showed that an artificial intelligence system could predict acute kidney injury, a common killer of hospitalized patients, up to 48 hours in advance. The results were so promising that the Department of Veterans Affairs, which supplied de-identified patient data to help build the AI, said in 2019 that it would immediately start work to bring it to the bedside. But a new study shows how treacherous that journey can be. Researchers found that a replica of the AI system, trained on a predominantly male population of veterans, does not perform nearly as well on women. Their study, published recently in the journal Nature, reports that a model built to approximate Google's AI overestimated the risk for women in certain circumstances and was less accurate in predicting the condition for women overall. "If we have this problem, then half the population won't benefit," said Jie Cao, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan and the lead author of the paper.